


Final Fantasy XV Drabbles

by qinnamon



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M, for submissions, help me get into the promptis zine, mostly promptis tho, pray
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-04-24 08:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14351727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qinnamon/pseuds/qinnamon
Summary: Some Final Fantasy XV drabbles. Main pair Promptis, though it may focus on the poly roadtrip in some chapters.





	1. Sunflowers

**Author's Note:**

> Noctis having a green thumb = yes.

“So, what do you think?”

Noctis hovers nervously behind Prompto as he browses over the rows, eyes wide with a kind of curiosity that has Noctis’s stomach churning. He watches as his friend brushes his fingers along petals, gold touching white (Noctis insisted Prompto wear gloves, and not the fingerless ones he liked), smile wondrous and wide.

“I like it!”

A breath whistles out between teeth, the weight of the elephant alleviating from his chest. He pulls a slow upturn of his own lips, as he brushes his hair back with a finger. Casual.

“Yeah, well—” Noctis huffs, “took a _loooot_ o' work, so…”

“Yeah, yeah! It _looks_ it, dude!” Prompto bounces on his heels to turn to face Noctis. The latter can’t help but notice, despite the way that he floats onto the balls of his feet, his legs swivel away from the rows, leaving them intact. “Gotta admit, I didn’t take ya for a flower kinda guy.”

And it’s not as though Noctis can blame him, for such an assessment; it’s why there’s no blow, no tease. And even for those who think he _is_ that, a ‘flower kinda guy’, it’s sylleblossoms. Always sylleblossoms. With the garden filled to the _brim_ with sylleblossoms he roamed with Lunafreya in his childhood, it only makes sense; the welcoming blue, soft and inviting. All of them surrounding and encompassing, and it’s almost dream-like, looking back upon it, like traversing a cool sea. What with someone named after the night, someone who’s envisioned himself among the stars in the sky, just another speck up there in an all-encompassing blanket, it only makes sense that flowers so ethereal would be the symbols associated with everyone’s monarch.

And yet…

“Why sunflowers, by the way?”

Noctis’s favorite is the moonflower, a bright white piercing through the inky blackness, much like stars do. Shining bright like the moon to the point that it appears dancing in a party that only allows the attendance of one.

But Noctis can justify it by saying that moonflowers are hard to come by.

“Just had ‘em,” he says with a shrug, and as with most things that Noctis says, Prompto seems to buy it. _Seems_ to, because Noctis has noticed sometimes when he’s come up with excuses for things, Prompto lingers longer than anyone else does, and his eyes bore into him as if they’re asking him a question that he doesn’t know the answer to. He’s noticed, even, that Prompto would even fidget with his belt for a moment, and look at his wrist, and then he’d huff out a laugh like Noctis just said something that made _too much_ sense.

There’s weight like that a lot when the two of them talk, now that Noctis thinks about it.

Sometimes Noctis wants him to ask the question he's dying to know.

But as is normal, Prompto shrugs with that little airy laugh again before he goes back to browsing them, and Noctis’s heart twinges again at the little skip to his feet; easy, yet calculated. Prompto doesn’t think anyone notices, does he?

“We- _ell_ , Noct,” Prompto hums, “it’s a good garden. Your old man help you with it?”

“He’s not really into this sort of thing.”

“He isn’t? _Fishing_ I could understand—”

“There’s _nothing_ wrong with fishing.” They’re following the beats again. It’s easy to fall into that with Prompto. Not that Noctis is complaining; he loves it. He loves that _here we go again_ feeling. He loves it because it’s the most normal, and yet the most extraordinary, feeling in the world. It’s routine, but it’s routine in a way that doesn’t feel artificial.

“Yeah, not if you’re a forty-year-old man," Prompto huffs, and if they were anywhere else, Noctis would shove him. But he doesn’t want him to accidentally crush the sunflowers.

He browses through them again, only to pick one up in particular that had been in a corner, already within a vase, the fancy, hand-blown kind that could only be orchestrated for the Lucis Caelum family. “Hey.” Noctis approaches Prompto, who’d been looking at them again, and Noctis is almost guilty for disturbing him, the way the mystic look in his eyes disappears upon looking at him again. “This one is for you.”

“For me? Really—?” And Noctis holds it out to him, and there it is. There it is, the way that his lips stretch, the way that the color on his face blooms, and he becomes glassy-eyed in that way that makes Noctis’s heart lurch. “Ah, um, ah, oh, s-sure, but — you sure, du—”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Noctis cuts him off clumsily, swallowing thickly. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

Another tense breath. But it’s not Noctis’s, it’s Prompto’s, and he _sees_ it, a crack through — maybe Prompto _does_ know. Or maybe Noctis just pressed hard enough at it, this one time. Either way, he takes it. Cradles it between his hands like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever held. “Thanks,” he says after a pregnant pause.

“Yeah. No prob.”

They’re oh so quiet, and it’s delicate. Noctis feels the wind brush through his hair, and although they’re surrounded by color, it’s gray everywhere except when he looks at Prompto.

“Y’know, this flower is real pretty. I can see why it’s called a _sunflower_.”

For all his own green thumb, though, Noctis is not sure he agrees with that. There’s a greater sun that he’s seen before that’s brighter than any of those flowers could ever hope to be, after all.


	2. Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arguing is not fun. Reflecting on it later is even less fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to get some feelings out. Sorry if disjointed since it was written quickly and spontaneously.

It wasn’t often that Noctis and Prompto wound up in a fight — but when they did, it could feel like the end of the world to Noctis.

Maybe it hit worse because Prompto didn’t often _yell_ ; when the two of them had some kind of conflict, he instead decided to leave the situation entirely, not responding to anything Noctis said, ending contact with him during that time. It was the case this time at least, as Noctis tried contacting him on his phone after the two of them parted from each other in the arcade, but no dice.

At the time, Noctis felt unwanted, expressed as much to Prompto, tensed about it enough to the point that tensions ran high and Prompto had had enough, so reasonably he went to decompress.

There was a problem with that, though: while Noctis became an artist of avoiding problems he didn’t want to deal with, avoidance was the very _last_ thing he wanted in this situation.

Late night left him staring at the ceiling in the dark, which made his apartment room expand that much bigger around his body. The shadows stretched out long and they covered his entire body, and even the sliver of moonlight that managed to draw through the window was covered by clouds that surrounded it. None of the light that Noctis’s body was bathed in reached his eyes, which stayed as dark as the surrounding room around him. Which Noctis preferred, really; such darkness may, to someone else, appear to be frightening— _like Prompto_ — but to him, it blanketed him in such a way as to prevent too much from being seen.

Noctis could hide in this. And while Noctis did not want to be alone, he also sought solace in his ability to hide.

Eyelashes damp, Noctis swallowed thickly as the conversation replayed over and over within his head.

_“Look, dude, it doesn’t mean anything if I’m playin’ a game while you fish.”_

_“You’re not even_ **_watching_ ** _. You’d know that the line snapped if you’d just been_ **_watching_ ** _.”_

_“I just happened t’ look away at the time, that’s all… I swear I was payin’ as much attention as I could.”_

_“Just admit it, you were bored.”_

_“I-I wasn’t, Noct—”_

_“Yeah, I’m sure you were looking at your phone ‘cause you were_ **_enraptured_ ** _by what I was doing.”_

_“I…don’t even know what enraptured means, but… Like, we’d been out for a few hours, y’know? It was hot, and I just—”_

_“You jerked me around. Made me feel like you actually_ **_cared_ ** _. Not even fair, either. I’ve stayed up_ **_all night_ ** _watching you paint once.”_

_“A-and I appreciate it, an’ I didn’t mean to make you feel like you_ **_had_ ** _to, if you did—”_

_“That’s not the_ **_point_ ** _, Prompto! Six, you’re not even paying attention in_ **_this_ ** _conversation!”_

_“But I_ **_am_ ** _paying attention!”_

_“Yeah? Then what was the point of what I was tryin’ to say?”_

_“Man, I can’t tell you that for you, I’m just… I swear, I was paying attention. I did like it, it’s just… It does get a little long after a while, y’know?”_

_“Whatever. I won’t bring you along next time.”_

_“What? But, Noct, I— Y’know what? Never mind.”_

_“Never mind?”_

_“You don’t wanna listen to me.”_

_“Well, you know_ **_all_ ** _about that, huh?”_

_“Ugh!” And Prompto looked at the clock. “It’s gettin’ late, Noct. So I’m goin’ home, and I’m goin’ to bed.”_

_And then he left._

It was a stupid argument, Noctis knew it. A stupid argument that ruined a night that they could have potentially spent the rest of at the arcade. He tried to justify it in his head — that he couldn’t help it, that Prompto really hurt him, that he didn’t want Prompto to ever pretend that he wanted to be around him because it felt like he _never_ did, that he was another one of those befriending him for notoriety — but in the end, all it led to was this. Was Noctis lying around at home in his bed all by himself, and only counting his blessings that no one could see how torn up he was.

And now he couldn’t even say that he was sorry.

Noctis pressed his cheek into his pillow again, checking his phone, checking his messages. No notification, again, after Noctis sent an apology.

And he probably wouldn’t until the morning, most likely. Noctis wanted to sleep to pass the hours that he spent waiting for a response, but that was the nice, ever so lovely thing about anxiety: he couldn’t sleep.

And as was typical of nights like these, it made it difficult not to ruminate, not to think of what he could have done differently. And from there, nicely nestle that guilt deep within his chest until it ate him from the inside out. And of course, the _nicest_ of them all, worry and fret over the fact that _this was it_ , that this was the last one, that Prompto would realize the same thing everyone else appeared to realize him, that he was best off a friend for his _title_ as opposed to anything of substance in the person beneath, and leave him behind entirely.

That thought suffocated Noctis, and even throughout his attempts to distract himself with reading, with a game to himself, with staring at the ceiling some more and doing something mundane like counting all the chips within it, it didn’t change the looming presence of doubt that Prompto would ever come back. The single most important person of his life, and Noctis said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and now he would be plunged back into the world of loneliness again. He’d still have Gladio, he’d still have Ignis… But it wasn’t the same.

No one, and nothing, could possibly replace Prompto, and in the throes of such a gripping agony and fear would he recognize this anew.

As he pressed the pillow further into his face, Noctis breathed in tightly, throat becoming thicker and fingers gripping onto the fabric tighter.

* * *

The next morning made it clear how much sometimes Noctis felt he didn’t deserve someone like Prompto when the text he got was sunny as he was.

[txt]: it’s ok noct, lets move on ok? it’s a new day :D btw king’s knight had an update so be sure to chek it!


	3. Kissing Nerves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's okay to have relationship concerns and need to take things slow.

Noctis is shaking.

His fingers tremble as he touches the desk next to him, his heart roaring within his ears. His body swarms with electricity — an electricity that desires to escape, but has no outlet as he stares at the wall blankly, mind covered with a fog. Actually, perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that it’s not covered with a _fog_ , exactly, but the same vision over and over on repeat, chasing out any other thoughts that might be prevalent in his brain, replacing them instead with sensations, with visions, with touch and taste and smell and presence. Looming over him, skin heating to his own touch as it had been before, before with _him_.

_Fingers trailing over skin, he asks, “Is this okay, Noct?”_

_“Yeah,” Noctis says as it seeps through his veins, as his breath becomes shaky, as they trail down further along his arms, along his sides._

_“Are you sure? You’re shaking.”_

_And right, Prompto is, because Noctis is shaking. He’s shaking a lot, and he doesn’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. He’s been told the body reacts strongly. He’s been told it’s supposed to be electric, overwhelming. But he hadn’t expected it to be like this._

_“It’s fine.” But Noctis doesn’t dare agree. Doesn’t dare agree, because he wants this, really. He wants this, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, really._

Noctis presses his face into his pillow, taking deep breaths. One, two. In, out. Back and forth. Swallows thickly over and over, throat feels dry. He can’t see a damn thing in the dark except what’s behind mind’s eye.

He reaches, he gropes around the bedside. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for, yet.

_Breath rushes over his lips, and Noctis’s open a little bit. He likes this, the way that air whistles through his teeth and knowing that it belongs to Prompto, that it’s Prompto’s life that he’s taking, that his friend is there and he’s holding him and he’s doing this with him and he wouldn’t do it with anyone else._

_Lips collide and Noctis feels it, feels the nervousness that Prompto’s holding back, and he wonders why he’s holding it back at all. Prompto’s done that a lot, held back how he feels — Noctis has sometimes been fooled into thinking he’s completely confident. But the clumsiness with which those lips brush over his indicates that he’s inexperienced as he is._

_When he pulls back, his voice is soft, “Sorry.”_

_“Why are you sorry?”_

_“I mean,” Prompto hesitates, “I-I would think the prince would want, want the best kisser in the world, and you’ve got me…”_

_Noctis laughs, and then he pecks him, and the warmth blossoms through his head a little differently than the first time. “I’ve never kissed anyone before you,” Noctis says. “Don’t have anyone to compare to.”_

_“Right, right. But, y’know. It’s not like there’s some button prompt an’ then you’re just miraculously good at it.”_

_Noctis snorts at that. “Stop bein’ a dork.”_

_“You’re the dork!”_

His fingertips brush over metal casing. Noctis curls them around it as he brings it up, as the screen lights up on his phone. It’s too-bright within his eyes surrounded by nothing but moonlight and he has to squint.

He’s checking through their messages, all of them. Looking for signs. Looking for signs that he’d said something wrong, but when he looks back over them that tinge of nostalgia that rushes through him reminds him that it’s okay, that he can say something about this. That he doesn’t have to lie there in the dark pretending nothing happened back there.

He begins to type.

_“Noct?”_

_He’s unable to pay much attention. His stomach is churning as Prompto is going lower, as they should be going lower, naturally, but he can’t…_

_“Noct, it’s okay. It’s okay—”_

_“I’m sorry,” Noctis says with a tremble in his voice. “You’re — I trust you, it’s just—”_

_“Noct. I mean it. It’s okay… It’s normal.”_

_“But it’s not what everyone says…”_

_“Noct,” Prompto touches him gently on the arm. “You… You mean a lot to me, okay? It’s, it’s okay. I don’t mind waiting.”_

_“But after I made a big deal about it, after all that—”_

_“You’ve never been close to anyone like that before,” Prompto says. He gently pecks him on the temple, and there it is, that same warmth. The warmth that makes Noctis want to cry, for some reason. “It’s okay if you’re overwhelmed. Dude, I was nervous as all hell just to_ **_tell_ ** _you things, let alone actually doin’ ‘em, I wouldn’t be in a position to judge you.”_

_“And… What if I don’t… What if I can’t…ever?”_

_“Doubt that’s gonna happen. But if it does…” Prompto smiles at Noctis and yeah, he’s sure he’s going to cry now. “We’ll find something else, okay? As I said…I don’t mind waiting for you, Noct.”_

Three little words.

[txt]: i love you.

That’s what Noctis sends to Prompto, beginning to cry again.

Prompto doesn’t hesitate in responding.

[txt]: i love you too dude.  
[txt]: don’t be scared. you’re not gonna lose me.

For Prompto to believe him, after all that, meant the world to him.


	4. true light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suddenly feel inspired to write pseudo-symbolic shit i think i'm morphing into nomura help

They say they see the sun. Tendrils of light surely comforting under any other circumstance simply burn through his skin, acidic — he’s pretty sure it flakes around his knuckles, which have gone hot white under the pressure of how tightly he’s held onto his gun. There’s cheering, celebrating around him, but what he hears is the screeches of the to be damned who are only prolonging the inevitable. Someone who’s effectively a stranger now claps him on the back, another offers a celebratory dinner, and a girl pipes up that it’s time to go.

He’s never actively considered mortality until recently, really. It’s not that he’s never been keen to the fact that they’ll all die someday, nor that they’ve never been at risk; after all, he’s _seen_ it, in fact, and he’s seen the effect that it has. He’s not as stupid as he looks, never has been. Everyone sees the doe eyes and they’re the doe eyes he puts on, always like a deer caught in headlights before he laughs the same as if it means anything, as if it’s not a carefully constructed mask he’s worn for years. But adults always say the same thing, and it’s that teenagers are stupid and they don’t consider it could happen to them or anyone they know, and maybe he was a stupid teenager too even though he’d been twenty years old. Thirty. Thirty years old, and he’d thought the same thing.

He’s floating in a sea of faces all crowding together, and they look to the citadel like it’s a beacon of hope, the bell chimes undeniably victorious in the way they sound across Insomnia. But when he looks at the citadel, he sees instead a monster that’s devoured everything and everyone else is unsuspecting. It wears sheep’s clothing because the gods blessed it with that ability, as they have _blessed_ the dear Oracle and the King, coming together for Eos’s peace. He knows what he saw on the inside. No one else has to know, no one else has to know. For them this is the dawn of a new day and it’d just _sour the damn mood_.

For him, it’s the end and he’s only waiting for the remainder of what he has to be snuffed out like everything else.

He attends the celebratory dinner among the Kingsglaive with the same kind of plastered smile he’s always done because thank the gods he’d managed to get a lot of practice in for _that_. Literally thank them, because it’s their fault he’s even had to practice in the first place. Knives and forks tapping plates barely registers in his mind as he stares up at one of the large paintings that he remembers specifically because of what was said about it. He doubts the others even notice the painting, too busy chittering among each other and acting like that’s it and everything moves forward. And he joins the inane chittering, too, grin stretched too-wide but no one says anything about it. He’d argue no one says anything _at all_ , because they’re avoiding everything because the source of light that they see is obvious, but what brought them that source of light… Well, you hardly notice something that’s impossible to observe.

Everything tastes the same like this, and he’d never been especially fond of eating but maybe he’d developed a habit and it’d been an easy one, too, when it’d been the four of them together. Round the campfire fish tastes like the best thing he’s ever had even if his stomach doesn’t entirely agree with him on that assessment. With four eyes the cook watches him carefully, because he’s pretty sure he’s always suspected him on that front even if he continues to speak to him in sharp tongues. He knows _he_ picked up on it, eventually, talked about it with him one night. He still remembers every word of that conversation.

Like everything else shared only between the two of them, he’s taking it to his grave.

He watches the others and wonders if they realize how plastic the food tastes, then he thinks, _No, probably not._ To them the flavor tastes just as sweet as the way they describe the clouds, fluffy and bright. He honestly hadn’t even noticed they _had_ clouds. His vision is somehow worse now than it had been when stars were the only source of light that remained in the sky.

It’s somewhere late into the celebrations that she joins him at his table. “You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” she asks him.

“Nah, s’okay,” he says, lips tight, but at least the corners face upward.

He doesn’t know if she’s silent or he simply doesn’t understand any of her words. Her lips move, but none of it makes any sense and it blurs in with all the other noises around them. They’re hardly cacophony; it’s more like they’re white, like the sun’s rays. It’s bright to them but to him it’s dull, and the only brightness comes from the sting it causes his eyes due to not being used to it. If she is talking, she keeps talking for a while as if he had said anything, and he nods appropriately when it seems like she pauses to make it appear as though he’s listening.

It’s not that he’s ignoring her, not really. It’s just that, like everything else, it has no meaning.

He must’ve nodded to the wrong statement at some point, though, as she stops and looks at him, purses her lips. “Prompto?”

_Prompto_. Is that who he is? Is that his name? “Yeah?”

“You seem really out of it.”

_Out of it_. Of course. As if they’re the ones who have come to some realization that he’s slow to catch up to. Out of it, like he’s out of touch with reality. It’s laughable, but he knows he’ll look like a madman if he barks one out now, no matter how tempting. “Just a li’l tired, s’all,” he says, and it’s true, he is tired. Very, very tired. “It’s okay! I’ll be right as rain once I go to bed tonight.”

He knows immediately she doesn’t believe him, which doesn’t surprise him much. She’s always been perceptive. It’s among several reasons that he worries about her. But she doesn’t say anything to call him out on it ( _call him out on what?_ ) before returning to her food. The clicks and the clacks are the same as every plate, and he’d become tempted, maybe, to think that she’s the same as everyone else, too.

Then she murmurs, “I miss him, too.”

And he feels it again: searing pain. And he sees it again, behind his eyes: _him_ , lying on the throne, very still.

To everyone else, the sun is light.

But in Prompto’s eyes, the last of his own light died along with him.

“It’s more than that,” he tells her after a moment, voice choked, but he doesn’t cry. That would imply he had anything left inside of him at all, and he doesn’t. _He’d_ scooped it out of him when he’d gone.

“I know,” she says.

“Everyone else,” he pauses, sucks in a shaky breath as he stares at the plate that’s so, so white. “Everyone else is all happy, an’ — everything’s so great for them. Everything’s saved to them. But to me, it’s…”

“I know,” she says again.

The pause between them is pregnant, but once again as Prompto always does he breaks it because it suffocates him. “I-I don’t know if I can go on without him. I… I don’t think I am, even, right now.”

And it’s something besides burning that he feels, for once, when her fingers brush over the back of his hand… It’s almost like understanding. He looks at her face and he realizes he misjudged her. He’s seen that expression as it’s the same one he’s been making in the mirror, now that they can use mirrors again.

“He was everything to me. I would…rather have the daemons back. That’s… That’s selfish, isn’t it, Iris?”

She smiles at him. Something within him loosens. It’s not a happy smile, but it’s the kind of smile he needs right now. Not the celebratory ones. Not the one that he’d gotten upon the proud clap on the back for shooting down the last of the daemons. It’s the smile that says, _We’ll navigate this dark world that no one else sees together_.

“I think wherever he is, he’s rolling in it that we’re still thinking about him.”

And Prompto smiles back with all the fragility that he’s been riding on. “That’s just like Noct. What an attention whore.”

And Iris helps him to realize that there’s no way, no how he’s ever going to come to regret giving him his everything. Maybe the burn of the sun will die, and Prompto along with it… But at least he won’t be doing it alone.


End file.
